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Fundamental rights

The term ‘fundamental rights’ expresses the concept of ‘human rights’ within a specific EU-internal context. Traditionally, the term fundamental rights is used in a constitutional context whereas the term ‘human rights’ is used in international law. The two terms refer largely to the same substance as can be seen, for instance, by the many similarities between the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights. The EU has come to use fundamental rights to describe the obligations of the EU and its Member States towards everyone in the EU. To keep it simple, the toolkit uses the expression ‘fundamental rights’ throughout.